KIMMY'S LIST

CHAPTER 11

Jax rested his head on a hand while he scrolled through the photos of Lance Edwards on his computer screen. The crime scene officer who sent them to him via email, also included morgue photos taken after transport.

The advance decomp hindered his visual assessment of the extent of any injuries. From what he could discern from the images, Lance had been stabbed multiple times, front and back. An autopsy would ultimately determine the cause of death.

Jax lifted his eyes to the two photos on his whiteboard with the branding, ‘LOCATED DECEASED’ above each one. With these two being located, the elephant in the room needed addressing. Was Kimberly Davis really a psychic medium who spoke to dead people, or a murderer?

His heart said the former, his experienced police investigator brain said the latter.

He rolled his eyes when he saw his boss marching over to his desk. ‘Here we go…’ he mumbled to himself.

Jeff approached the whiteboard and stood with his hands on hips, while he regarded the photo display. ‘Two out of seven located,’ he said. He moved to rest himself on the edge of Jax’s desk.

‘Now do you agree it’s time to bring her in…?’ Jeff said.

Jax fell back in his chair and locked his fingers behind his head. ‘You’re probably right,’ Jax said.

‘But I’m wondering if we should try one more name on Kimberly’s list, first.’

‘And then what….? You’d have located three, all because she told you where the bodies were. It wouldn’t matter if you checked five, or the whole goddamn list…’ Jeff said.

‘You would still be back here at the same spot you are now, realising you have to bring her in for questioning.’

He couldn’t argue with his boss’ logic. He just didn’t share his boss’ beliefs that this was a fait accompli.

‘If I bring her in…’ Jax began. ‘She will just stick to the same story…’ he said. ‘The ghosts of these people visited her and told her where their bodies were located.’

‘Good.’ Jeff pushed himself away from the desk. ‘GOOD,’ he repeated.

‘That’s what we want her to say. Then we’ll say, prove it…and when she can’t, she’s stuffed. Put a fork in her, mate, she’s done.’

The criminal investigation unit’s admin officer approached Jax’s desk. She mounted the words, ‘Excuse me.’ to Jax, then dropped some mail onto his desk and walked away.

Jax nudged the letters to spread them. He lifted the letter with the Oolong Coroner’s Court branding. He read the front, flipped it over and tore it open.

‘Ah, Sarah Moon’s autopsy report,’ he said to Jeff. Jax reclined in his chair as he read the report.

‘Multiple stab wounds to the back. Ah… three in total, with a twenty centimeter, one - sided blade, and one to the chest,’ he announced as he read. ‘Cause of Death was from the knife rupturing her heart.’ Jax turned the page. ‘No defensive wounds, or any other injuries or markings. Suggests a blitz attack, probably from behind, given the frontal strike appeared to be the one that killed her,’ Jax said.

Jeff accepted the report from Jax and read it.

‘Three in the back and one through the heart in a blitz attack…’ Jax said.

‘I’m not so sure that’s something the Kimberly Davis I met, could do. It seems fairly cold… fairly brutal.

‘Then she had to transport the body to Winchester, weigh it down with car batteries and toss it far enough into the center of the dam, so it remained below the surface, should the water levels drop.’

Jax shook a disbelieving head. ‘I’m not so sure, Boss.’

‘Clearly she had a male accomplice, or a strong female. Never can tell these days,’ Jeff said.

‘Regardless, you’ve gotta bring her in. Let her tell you what she did.’

‘I told you my thoughts. I know exactly what she will say. She will say she had nothing to do with the murder. She’ll say these friggin’ ghosts told her where the bodies were located. She’ll stick to that story. Then what? We have no evidence linking her to the murders.’

Jeff waved the back of hand at Jax. ‘Charge her anyway…’

Jax fell back in his chair, defeated. He slowly shook his head.

‘Excuse me, Higgo. You got a minute?’ A uniform senior constable approached Jax’s desk. Jax was too invested in his argument with his boss to notice the cop’s approach.

Jax lifted his chin to the cop. ‘Yeah, mate. What’s up?’ Jax watched his boss step away and return to his office.

‘We recovered a red Mazda 626 on a property at Maude, under thick trees and growth,’ the uniform cop said. ‘When we did a check for the owner, there was a notation on the VicRoads data base to contact you. So, here we are.’

‘Who was the owner?’

The cop read from his notes. ‘The registered owner is Malcolm Denver.’

Jax’s eyes instinctively flicked to the photo of Malcolm on his whiteboard. The cop’s gaze followed. The cop approached the whiteboard and read from Malcolm’s photo.

‘Is that him there….?’ The cop asked. ‘He’s a missing person…?’ He said as a question.

‘Sure is…’

‘Ah, I see,’ the cop said. He held out an iPhone to Jax. ‘This was on the front passenger seat of the Mazda,’ the cop said. ‘You’ll probably be interested in it.’

The cop held the phone in a disposable glove, loosely sitting in his hand.

‘But it’s not the phone that I thought you would be interested in. Look at this.’ The cop activated the phone. ‘It was unlocked and these were open on the display.’

Jax accepted the loose glove and phone and viewed the photos open on the screen. He frowned at the uniform cop. ‘What the hell is this?’

‘There’s about sixty more of them in a hidden folder. The dates go back as far as three months,’ the cop said. ‘Just watch the battery. It’s pretty low…about 5%.’

Jax checked the model of iPhone. He heaved open a drawer and removed his phone charger and connected the iPhone to a power socket. ‘Same phone as mine,’ he mumbled.

He rummaged through his top drawer and removed a pencil with an eraser on the end.

He used the eraser to slide through the naked photos. ‘These look like they were taken through a bedroom window…’

Jax said. He shook a disapproving head. ‘This guy was a primary school principal…’

‘Looks like your missing school teacher was a sex offender…’ the cop said.

‘D’ya reckon it could have something to do with why he went missing…? Someone caught him…?’

‘Who knows? Anything is possible, at this stage,’ Jax said. ‘So, this was on the front, passenger seat and it was unlocked…?’

Jax said. He rubbed a contemplative hand across his mouth.

‘Yep. I checked the settings and the phone lock was disabled.’

This anomaly was not lost on Jax. A pervert who stored naked photos of his victim on his phone would not disable his phone lock. It was the combination to his safe and he would protect it, and his reputation.

‘Someone unlocked this phone and left it to be found…’ Jax said. ‘Which suggests they knew about the photos…’

‘How do you figure?’

Jax ignored the question.

‘Where in Maude was the car located?’ Jax booted up Google Maps satellite image on his computer.

‘Under heavy foliage just off Steilight Road…About fifty meters south of Injock Road,’ the cop said.

Jax followed the directions on his computer screen. ‘Around these trees here?’ Jax asked. He gestured to his monitor.’

The cop checked the screen. ‘That’s exactly it…It’s parked under this group of trees, there.’

‘OK, Great. Get the crime scene team out there to photograph and process the vehicle. When they’re done, arrange for it to be towed back to our holding garage.’

‘Will do,’ the uniform cop said, then departed the office.

Jax lifted the iPhone in the loose glove and examined it. He expected it to be clean, but he would still have to arrange for it to be dusted - no stone left unturned.

‘OK. So what have you got for me…?’ Jeff asked as he approached Jax’s desk. He stood with arms crossed. It was fair to assume from his body language, Jeff expected he was in for an argument about the timing of when to bring in Kimberly Davis.

Jax’s years of experience as an investigator of serious crime had taught him that in any investigation, it was important to gather all evidence necessary to obtain a conviction. Only then do you arrest the offender for interview. Roll the dice too early and the offender could walk.

Jeff’s eyes fell to the desk. He frowned. ‘What the hell are those…?’ He said. He lifted the pile of ten - by - eight colour photos of a naked woman. He flipped through them. ‘Are these all of the same naked woman?’ Jeff said.

Jax couldn’t tell if the tone in Jeff’s voice was disappointment from the lack of variety in the photos, or simply realization.

‘These were taken on the 23rd…. The 24th…. The 25th …. And the 26th….’ Jeff said, as he continued to flip through the photos.

‘Again on the 30th …. 1st….. 2nd…. And the 3rd …. They keep going, virtually all in successive dates. What are all these about…?’

‘They’re part of what I wanted to talk to you about…’ Jax said.

After Jax accepted Malcolm Denver’s iPhone from the uniform boys, he got to thinking how the phone’s technology could assist him. He took it to the experts at the police IT Technical department.

The IT techs accessed a file in the phone that stored the phone’s latitude and longitude coordinates, along with a timestamp. They compared this to the signal strength between the phone and the nearest mobile towers, and with triangulation, they were able to approximate Denver’s movements.

To Jax, this was telling and he wanted to discuss it with his boss. He wanted to use this information to delay bringing in Kimberly Davis while they searched for the three bodies at Steilight.

‘Our Tech guys printed those photos you have there from Malcolm Denver’s mobile phone, after it was recovered in his vehicle. Each photo displays a date and time stamp.’

‘I saw that. So this Denver was a sex offender…?’

‘Appears so. But that is not what I wanted to discuss with you,’ Jax said. Jeff dropped the photos onto the desk as Jax continued.

Jax opened his case file and removed some pages. ‘These here are latitude and longitude co-ordinates the techs were able to access from Denver’s phone.’

He handed them to Jeff.

‘They show Denver’s last movements. More particular, they provide an approximate location in Steilight where his body could be located.’

Jeff frowned as he read all the numbers listed vertically down the page.

‘What, all these numbers tell us that?’

‘I’ll show you. Hand me that top page there.’ Jax accepted a page and accessed a website. He entered the co-ordinates. A map appeared on the screen with a blue pin indicating a location in Steilight.

He turned his monitor to Jeff. ‘See that. Those co-ordinates indicated Denver’s phone was at that location at 11:18PM during the night of the 18th. I’m guessing he is buried somewhere in the area of that pin.’

‘How reliable is that technology?”

‘It’s accurate. It won’t pin point his location exactly, but it gives us an area to search.’

‘And you want to search this area before you bring in Kimberly Davis?’ Jax asked knowingly.

‘Look here…’ Jax said. He read from Kimberly’s list. ‘This list records that Denver is supposed to be in a deep hole in Steilight with Jenny Cox and Brian Taylor.’

Jax flicked open his case file folder. His fingers walked through the pages, searching. He lifted a page and placed it to the side. His fingers kept searching. He lifted a second page and closed the folder.

He handed the stolen vehicle recovery reports to Jeff, as he continued.

‘Brian Taylor’s burnt out car was located near the quarry on Maude - She Oaks Road.’ Jax pointed to the report in Jeff’s left hand. ‘That’s around six kilometers from Steilight,’ Jax said. ‘Jenny Cox’s car was located in a dam in Annakies.’ He pointed to the other report. ‘That’s around seven kilometers from Steilight. And Malcolm Denver’s car was located in Maude. Three and a half kays from Steilight .The information on Kimmy’s list could be correct. All three could be in a hole in Steilight.

‘Aren’t there a heap of disused mine shafts around Steilight?’ Jeff said.

‘Exactly. And I’m hoping there is one near those co-ordinates,’ Jax said. He gestured to the map on his computer monitor.

‘If you do this… Regardless of whether you find bodies in a mine shaft, or not… you bring her in. No more delaying the inevitable. Are we clear?’

‘Crystal.’

Jeff dropped the pages on the desk. ‘Get it Done.’